DisplaySearch, Sideshow Bob, and The 3D Numbers

[PressBot]

By Neil Schneider



I'm a huge Simpsons fan, and I will never forget an episode where career criminal Sideshow Bob runs for office.  After winning a landslide vote, he wreaks havoc on Springfield as its mayor.  Fortunately, Lisa Simpson discovers that Bob's winning votes were cast by deceased inhabitants of the local cemetery (human and pet!) - and all is returned to normal.  Well, as normal as Springfield gets, anyway.
What do 3D and Sideshow Bob have in common, you ask?  We shall see!

At the end of September, Chris Connery (VP of PC and Large Format Commercial Displays for DisplaySearch) published a blog entitled "Have 3D Desktop Displays Come and Gone Already"?

Read full article...

[Likay]

Excellent reading and i agree with every word of it! Now faved since it contains a lot of valuable arguments. Thanks!

[Dom]

3d sales actually might make sense for doing good or bad, but whats really more important is how good the experience is, that we get from these products. All the companies like Nvidia, samsung, acer ect... even the software companies already have made millions or billions selling older 2d panels and still are. The software companies don't really even need to spend money making the software as all they have to do is type in some code to make the software tick. You could probably make a software driver company on one laptop and have a 200 dollar server to sell it. So all these companies make huge amounts of cash even though theres the 3d bonus check they get. Its the same as the movies as they play both versions 2d and 3d or sell the blu-ray, dvd and blu-ray 2d copy 3d , that triple income. I really can't feel sorry for a company that says they are gonna release a product then never do and that theres not enough 3d sales so it makes it down and out because its not about having 3d fade away its about having it there for those who want it and want the fullness of 3d.
It always been here its just not to many people have heard of it before and seen it before till now.

[cybereality]

I am not sure those sale figures are that bad all things considered. 3D gaming on the PC is a high-end niche market. I would compare it to other high-end PC peripherals, like triple-screen Eyefinity setups, tri/quad-SLI GPUs, etc. Really, how many people do you think have triple monitor setups and the insane rig needed to power them? Doesn't make the experience any less cool. And doesn't mean its not still profitable to AMD to support the feature. The same goes for 3D Vision with Nvidia. I'm in basically every 3D forum on the net, I know its not a huge market. But I think the people that are in it are very excited about the technology, and it has a lot of potential. I just think the barrier of entry is huge and not many people are willing to spend $500-1000 on a whim, without actually seeing the technology for themselves. Once 3D becomes more mainstream, I think people will all want 3D computer monitors. Its the natural evolution.

[mar10br0]

You could probably make a software driver company on one laptop and have a 200 dollar server to sell it.

You're obviously completely ignorant of the software-industry. To write driver(!) software you also need to give the developer every version of the hardware that the driver is supposed to support. Oh, and the cost of the actual software-developer (an employee who would probably want to receive some salary payment, which dwarves those hardware-costs.... In other words, being able to sell drivers is not the "freebee" as you make it out to be. By omitting the lion-share of the cost, you make the same misrepresentation as the original article. Which is makes your comment ironic to say the least.

[Dom]

I suppose I am being a little ignorant but for someone who wants to code for a hobby and want recognition for open source and GNU/GPL software, they can make the cake when it comes to inventive and properly working software for cheap. I am sure theres a directx source code for free and to bind it to video cards and proper 3d glasses you would only need to make a loopback driver for redirection from the vga signal. Using the proprietory hardware is not the only key to get a fully working solution considering you would pay for support and developer costs.

Like I payed 50 dollars for a Kavoom software KM switch and Synergy KM is free and does the same thing.

To me software like backup solutions, system tweaking ect... People try and sell their GUI with the microsoft code line that based in their knowledge bases and they try and sell them for 20.99 for a simple thing to do. Its their simple plan b getting rich scheme.

So why is there no open source stereo3d api? Either it cost to much or someone has not learned how to do it yet.

And I knew that there are extra costs with certain stuff but software looks to me like its real cheap just making text files with code and renaming them to .dll or .reg or what have you. Especially when it won't cost 1 million dollars to make a driver and thats what you could make.

[Fredz]

I suppose I am being a little ignorant but for someone who wants to code for a hobby and want recognition for open source and GNU/GPL software, they can make the cake when it comes to inventive and properly working software for cheap.

That can be the case when writing quite simple applications, but not for low-level drivers which require a lot more time, skill and knowledge. Just have a look at the time it took for a team of experienced developers to get the Linux 2D Nouveau driver for NVIDIA graphic cards in a usable state (4 years). And it's not very rewarding when your potential user base is so small either, as is the case with stereo 3d.

So why is there no open source stereo3d api? Either it cost to much or someone has not learned how to do it yet.

There are some open source stereo3d solutions, just look for StereoGL, SoftGenLock/GenLock or stereowrap for example. The problem is that there are not much people interested by either using them or contributing to them. So they are still in a somewhat experimental state for now and have been used mostly in VR research laboratories.

And I knew that there are extra costs with certain stuff but software looks to me like its real cheap just making text files with code and renaming them to .dll or .reg or what have you. Especially when it won't cost 1 million dollars to make a driver and thats what you could make.

Writing software is a lot more complicated than writing text files, especially when dealing with hardware at the lowest level. I've been a professional programmer for the last 13 years and I've been trying such low-level programming for stereo3d in my spare time, but it's quite complicated and time consuming.

And as mar10br0 said, if you want to create the most ubiquitous possible driver you'd need to have access to a lot of different hardware which is very costly in the end. So I don't think you'll see any major open source stereo 3d driver in a forseable future.

[cybereality]

So why is there no open source stereo3d api? Either it cost to much or someone has not learned how to do it yet.

I actually tried to get people together to write an open-source 3D driver. Neil was totally against it and basically killed the idea. I even started writing some code to hook DirectX. It was still a bit over my head (complex stuff) but I still think it could be done with the right people contributing. This was before iz3D opened up their driver, so things are a little different now.

And I knew that there are extra costs with certain stuff but software looks to me like its real cheap just making text files with code and renaming them to .dll or .reg or what have you.

I can assure you, there is a whole lot more to programming drivers then writing some code in Notepad and renaming the file to ".dll". Programming is an art form, and it takes a life-time to master. Just because you don't need any raw materials, doesn't mean that it doesn't take a lot of work. And the kinds of experts that spend their lives learning this stuff deserve to be compensated for their time.

[Fredz]

I actually tried to get people together to write an open-source 3D driver. Neil was totally against it and basically killed the idea. I even started writing some code to hook DirectX. It was still a bit over my head (complex stuff) but I still think it could be done with the right people contributing. This was before iz3D opened up their driver, so things are a little different now.

Too bad I wasn't around here at this time, I would have loved to contribute...